Windfall taxes are often championed by the political left as a good way of recouping cash from "fat cats" seen to have made excessive profits.

But in fact Margaret Thatcher's government was one of the most notable users of the tactic.

In 1981 the then-chancellor Geoffrey Howe introduced a special budget levy to harvest around £400m from the banks, which were seen to be escaping the pain of that recession.

The move, which creamed off 2.5% of the banks' non-interest bearing current account deposits, caused great consternation on the Conservative benches. However, it was only equivalent to around a fifth of their profits in that 12 months.

The following year the Treasury sought to share the benefit of high oil prices by imposing a special tax on North Sea oil and gas, which raised £2.4bn.

Soon after New Labour came to power in 1997, it targeted utilities that had been privatised under the Tories and were said to be making "excessive" profits.

Around £5bn was drained from firms including BAA, British Gas, British Telecom and Powergen. Their value was calculated on the basis of profits and the market value at flotation was subtracted. The companies then had to pay 23% of that figure to the exchequer in two instalments, with the money used to fund the New Deal welfare-to-work programme.

No windfall levies have been introduced since – although there were calls for one on energy companies such as BP and Shell in 2008, when soaring oil prices gave them massive profits as motorists suffered record prices at the pumps.